My View: Executive order another victory for fracking foes

Wednesday

Dec 29, 2010 at 2:00 AM

With Gov. David Paterson's executive order last weekend, New York became the first state in the country to put a formal timeout on the dangerous new gas drilling method known as hydro-fracking. This is a major victory for the citizens of New York, and across the country.

Susan Zimet

With Gov. David Paterson's executive order last weekend, New York became the first state in the country to put a formal timeout on the dangerous new gas drilling method known as hydro-fracking. This is a major victory for the citizens of New York, and across the country.

The governor's executive order directs the DEC to conduct further comprehensive review and analysis of high-volume hydrofracking in the Marcellus shale, and to revise the fatally flawed draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS). Permits for high-volume horizontal hydrofracking will not be issued until a revised draft is released in June and the public has a chance to speak. This is a clear acknowledgment of the fundamental shortcomings in the existing draft regulations.

Paterson's strong executive order comes after many other victories these past few months.

It was a stunning accomplishment for the hydrofracking moratorium to pass with a landslide bipartisan vote in the state Senate this summer, and then another strong victory in the Assembly a few weeks ago — both during special sessions with limited legislative agendas.

Elected officials from both parties, from upstate and downstate, are coming together to insist the burden of proof should be on the industry to verify that its technologies are safe, not the other way around.

Especially while all the scientific studies are still conducted, we should insist that our priceless water supply be treated as "sacrosanct" (in Gov.-elect Cuomo's words) and that New York not make the same mistakes as other states such as Pennsylvania, where fracking has been an unmitigated disaster on every level: for people's health, for the environment, for the economy, and for the overburdened state and local governments.

There is a strong argument to be made that this process can never be done safely, but what is certain is that moving forward prematurely — before the facts are all in — would be unquestionably reckless and dangerous. It hasn't been easy, but with a strong citizen movement supporting them, a majority of elected leaders in our state stood up this year to the massive spending of the gas industry.

And now New York is leading the nation on this issue. The only downside in the current freeze on drilling is that Paterson excluded vertical hydrofracking in his moratorium order, in contrast to bill passed overwhelmingly by the Legislature.

The intentional inclusion of vertical wells in the legislation passed by both houses was in direct response to the gas industry's threats to circumvent any moratorium on horizontal high-volume hydrofracking. Under current spacing laws, as many as 16 vertical wells could be drilled per square mile in the Marcellus shale, resulting in even greater environmental impacts than those being evaluated in the SGEIS.

In response to this threat, the Legislature intentionally added vertical hydrofracking wells in those shale formations to protect the public from this "end run" around the regulatory process.

In addition, the Legislature understood that it was vertical wells drilled into the Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania — including in the much-publicized case of Dimock — that resulted in serious environmental and health issues, including widespread groundwater contamination. Despite the industry-created distinction between vertical and horizontal, both carry many of the same devastating consequences.

With the election of a new governor, we are confident that this error will be corrected, that Cuomo will start on the right foot by closing the "Paterson loophole" and move forward to create a new energy paradigm for New York._____________________________________________________________

Susan Zimet is an Ulster County legislator and director of Frack Action.